Salad is a mixture of cold foods, usually including vegetables and/or fruits, often with a dressing, occasionally nuts or croutons, and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish, pasta, cheese, or whole grains. Salad is often served as an appetizer before a larger meal.
The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, which in turn is from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt", (See also sauce, salsa, sausage).
Green salad
The "green salad" or "garden salad" is most often composed of some vegetables, built up on a base of leaf vegetables such as one or more lettuce varieties, spinach, or rocket (arugula). The salad leaves are cut or torn into bite-sized fragments and tossed together (called a tossed salad), or may be placed in a predetermined arrangement.
Other common vegetables in a green salad include cucumbers, peppers, mushrooms, onions, spring onions, red onions, avocado, carrots, celery, and radishes. Other ingredients such as tomatoes, pasta, olive, hard boiled egg, artichoke hearts, heart of palm, roasted red peppers, cooked potatoes, rice, sweetcorn, green beans, black beans, croutons, cheeses, meat (e.g. bacon, chicken), or fish (e.g. tuna, shrimp) are sometimes added to salads. In a restaurant, a small salad without meat is called a dinner salad. The entree salads may contain chicken, either grilled or fried chicken fingers on top of the salad, or seafood in the form of grilled or fried shrimp, or a fish steak, such as tuna, mahi-mahi, or salmon. Steak such as sirloin can be grilled and sliced and placed upon the salad.
Popular types of garden salads
Dressings
A green salad is often served with a dressing. Some examples include:
The concept of salad dressing varies across cultures. There are many commonly used salad dressings in North America. Traditional dressings in southern Europe are vinaigrettes, while mayonnaise is predominant in eastern European countries and Russia. In Denmark dressings are often based on crème fraîche. In China, where Western salad is a recent adoption from Western cuisine, the term salad dressing (沙拉酱, shalajiang) tends to refer to mayonnaise or mayonnaise-based dressings.
Many light edible oils are used as salad dressings, including olive oil, corn oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, etc.
Garnishes
There are various vegetables and other fare that are often added to garden salads. Some of them are:
Again, individual taste usually governs the choice of salad garnishes.
Other types of salad
Some salads are based on food items other than fresh vegetables:
History
The diarist John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets (1699), that describes the new salad greens like "sellery" (celery), coming out of Italy and the Netherlands.
Recently, salads have been sold commercially in supermarkets for those who do not have time to prepare a home-made salad, at restaurants (restaurants will often have a "Salad Bar" laid out with salad-making ingredients which the customer will use to put together their salad) and at fast-food chains specialising in health food. Fast-food chains such as McDonalds and KFC that typically sell "junk food" such as hamburgers, fries and fried chicken have begun selling packaged salads in order to appeal to the health-conscious.
Largest salad
On September 29, 2007, Pulpí, in Almería (province), Spain tossed the world's largest salad, with 1,803,780 pounds of lettuce, tomato, onion, pepper and olives, supervised by 20 cooks over 3 hours. A Guinness World Records judge was present to confirm the new record. The salad was prepared in a container 18m (59ft) long and 4.8m (15.7ft) wide.[1]
References
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